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CHRs and Christmas music

D

danwxman

Christmas music is a staple of most AC and Country stations around the holidays.

But, I'd take a guess that most CHRs mix in at least some Christmas music. In my hometown of Harrisburg, WHKF will usually wait until a couple weeks before and will play about one xmas song per hour. WWKL has already started playing Christmas music, and will usually play a couple per hour closer to the holiday. Here in Philly, WIOQ has also already started playing xmas music.

So, how much Christmas music do you think belongs on CHR stations?
 
WJBQ here in Maine will normally play Christmas music a couple times a day starting in early December. I think CHRs should play Christmas songs three to four times a day starting December 1st and then maybe 2 to 3 days before Christmas begin playing one song an hour that is by current artists.
 
Dan said:
So, how much Christmas music do you think belongs on CHR stations?
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As little as possible. If I want Christmas music, I'll listen to an AC station. Here in Grand Rapids, we have two mainstream AC stations that play Christmas music. If I'm listening to a CHR station, I expect to hear Top 40 music - not Christmas music.
 
KIIS-FM occasionally drops a Christmas song per hour during most of December.
 
Some CHR's play "dancie" versions of Xmas songs after Thanksgiving (Xtina Aguilera's "The Christmas Song", Run D.M.C's "Christmas in Hollis" etc. That's about all I can take.
 
Y101 Jackson just played "All I Want For Christmas Is You". I'd say one per or every other hour would suffice. If I were a PD, I wouldn't play no more than two or three an hour during Christmas week.
 
This is an interesting discussion. I wouldn't think it all that unusual if a CHR played "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" by Brenda Lee or "Jingle Bell Rock" by Bobby Helms, even though those songs are over 50 years old now. When WDRQ in Detroit was a CHR, they played Brenda Lee as one of their holiday records. I can also remember both WDRQ and WKQI playing some of the more dance- and urban-flavored Christmas tracks such as TLC's version of "Sleigh Ride" and the La Bouche take on "Do You Hear What I Hear," and some of the tracks from the Destiny's Child Christmas album.

What WJIM (97.5 Now FM) in Lansing is doing, though, seems odd to me. Now FM is actually playing some of the older standards such as Bing's "White Christmas," Nat Cole's "Christmas Song," and the Carpenters' "Merry Christmas Darling" - the same holiday songs that their sister AC WFMK is playing (WFMK does not go all-Christmas, making it one of the few ACs in a medium-sized market that doesn't). Seems risky to me... wouldn't following up Ke$ha with Bing Crosby send listeners scrambling to switch the station? Sister WIOG in Saginaw is handling Christmas music the way I would expect a CHR to do it: stick to the novelty songs like "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch" or "Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer" that are still popular with the CHR audience, and the current/'90s to now CHR Christmas hits (Mariah, Britney's "My Only Wish", 'N Sync's "Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays" etc.).
 
What I find sort of interesting is that country stations play only Country Christmas songs, yet AC, HAC, CHR & Oldies play the same old standard Christmas tunes along with some Country Christmas (Alabama's "Xmas in Dixie", Willie Nelson's "Pretty Paper", etc). I also think the Oldies stations should stay with Oldies Xmas tunes. Seems that Country & Classical are the only formats that stick with the same Christmas music as their format.
 
KIIS is now playing a Christmas song per hour, this is a bit early since they start playing Christmas tunes by December.
 
KDM 7000 said:
KDM 7000 said:
WWWQ and WWVA are playing Train - Shake Up Christmas.
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Ok i'm no longer sure how accurate this is because now it shows that wvee has also played that song. I doubt all this is true.
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Turns out if you were looking at the Song Logs on www.yes.com for these stations (and others), the Train song shows up usually at a certain time each hour (or so) - since it's being used in a commercial for Coca-Cola! Yes.com (incorrectly since its detections are based on automatically capturing the info over-the-air) is picking this up as a "play (spin)" whereas Mediabase (correctly) is not.
 
pjc1961 said:
KDM 7000 said:
KDM 7000 said:
WWWQ and WWVA are playing Train - Shake Up Christmas.
Click to expand...

Ok i'm no longer sure how accurate this is because now it shows that wvee has also played that song. I doubt all this is true.
Click to expand...
Turns out if you were looking at the Song Logs on www.yes.com for these stations (and others), the Train song shows up usually at a certain time each hour (or so) - since it's being used in a commercial for Coca-Cola! Yes.com (incorrectly since its detections are based on automatically capturing the info over-the-air) is picking this up as a "play (spin)" whereas Mediabase (correctly) is not.
Click to expand...

So thats why "Shake Up Christmas" was #1 on some stations' yes.com lists? Because of the commercial?
 
bumping an old thread...

I've noticed that according to yes.com, Kiss 108 WXKS has played "All I Want For Christmas" by Mariah about 8 times already today. Do those spins get reported to Mediabase? I'm wondering if an old holiday song like that could break their Top 50, or is there some "rule" that prevents this?
 
I've always wondered what would happen if someone released a Christmas song that became so hot that it topped the chart for multiple weeks or months. What would happen? Would CHR's be forced to keep playing it? Would it have to be featured in top 30 or 40 weekly countdowns? If it was a huge hit, would it be forced to eventually make its way to AC and eventually oldies?

And I wonder what truly stops a Christmas song from ever becoming that big. Lets say that one of the biggest songs in history just happened to have Christmas lyrics instead of their original lyrics. Would people automatically not like the song as much just because they knew it was a Christmas song? Is the new Bruno Mars song considered a "Christmas song?"
 
nightfly61 said:
What I find sort of interesting is that country stations play only Country Christmas songs, yet AC, HAC, CHR & Oldies play the same old standard Christmas tunes along with some Country Christmas (Alabama's "Xmas in Dixie", Willie Nelson's "Pretty Paper", etc). I also think the Oldies stations should stay with Oldies Xmas tunes. Seems that Country & Classical are the only formats that stick with the same Christmas music as their format.
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What's also interesting is that you have country artists recording sacred Christmas songs (maybe not all that unusual), but you also have gospel artists recording secular Christmas songs. I noticed this when I was at my first station (dayparted country and gospel) and noticed records like "Sleigh Ride" by (supposedly) gospel artists.

Meanwhile, the Fish (Christian AC station here in Nashville) plays "Little Saint Nick" by the Beach Boys, among others.
 
KDM 7000 said:
I've always wondered what would happen if someone released a Christmas song that became so hot that it topped the chart for multiple weeks or months. What would happen? Would CHR's be forced to keep playing it? Would it have to be featured in top 30 or 40 weekly countdowns? If it was a huge hit, would it be forced to eventually make its way to AC and eventually oldies?
Click to expand...
That sort of happened in the '80s with Band Aid's "Do They Know It's Christmas." It was a much bigger hit in the UK than here in the states, but it still managed to stay on the charts for a while after Christmas. But it didn't get much airplay here stateside after the holidays passed.

I realize that you would probably like a more recent example, but that is the only one that I could think of. Of course, I should also point out that that was a charity record.
 
I notice something top40 and dance and hip hop and rb and old schools will play very good music I don't listen to hard rock but when I was kid I used too listen And I notice they used to never play christmas station on rock radio station Im going to say this Hallmark is the best channel for christmas movie and they have good christmas songs even though it's not the topic and thats what I really enjoy during christmas time :)
 
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